All the problems with Christianity

[Esquilax]

Not just any axe, but the Esquilaxe! (sorry, couldn't resist)

Still better than the Ex-lax puns some other theists have used.

Anyway...
There's still something I think you might be missing from the idea of slavery, but I'll save that for another time. It seems like a lot of this discussion on slavery is basically an assertion that the Bible must be wrong because it doesn't agree with all of our moral standards. (Not just yours, to be honest some of these laws don't make sense to me either.)

Not necessarily: tracing back, we can see that I was responding initially to your claim that you hadn't found anything immoral in the bible yet. What I've said so far doesn't speak to whether or not the bible is true, just why I wouldn't find it to be a comprehensive moral guide even if it was one hundred percent accurate.

But that's the thing - if the Bible was in complete agreement with what most people already believe, what a problem that would be! It would be evidence that the Bible was written later, as an elaborate hoax or something.

Considering how much our morality has improved in the last couple hundred years, I would say this line of thinking isn't entirely accurate. If it agreed with everything we believe now, then yes, it would be evidence that it was written later, or possibly it would be a show of prescience by god as to what our morals would be in the future.

However, the fact that every moral edict in that book conveniently agrees with the bronze age tribes that would have written it, to me, is evidence that it was written by men and not god. I mean, seriously: why does his morality so completely match up with that of a bunch of pre-scientific nomads? Surely an all knowing god would understand that, say, forcing a raped woman to marry her rapist is wrong?

But we can't possibly expect to understand why God says and does everything; otherwise we would almost be gods too.

Sorry, copout: first of all, why not? This moral stuff is supposed to be god detailing how we ought to live, and I would have thought a big part of that would be the reasoning behind it all, which an all knowing god would be able to tell us in a way we could understand.

Second of all, this line of thinking doesn't match up with your actions, either: if you run across a biblical edict that is immoral today, chances are you just ignore it, right? I'm willing to bet you've never killed a gay man or a witch, or owned slaves, because you seem like a nice enough person. If you really did subscribe to this mysterious ways stuff, then it wouldn't matter whether this stuff seems immoral now: god said it, he has his reasons, do it, right?

Which brings me to a wider point: is slavery moral or immoral? God still approves of it, you've said he must have his reasons for it, so what say you? Is morality determined by what god says, or is there something more to it.

I've been loving talking with you guys about this stuff, but it seems to me at the end of the day, while we still believe the Bible comes from God, you look at it and see an ancient fairy tale. We can never seem to understand why you don't take the Bible for anything other that what it so blatantly looks like, so you have tho get into the details of it, pointing out problems and contradictions and just hoping we'll come to think of what you've been thinking all along: The Bible is fantasy, about on a level with the Quran and the Gilgamesh Epic. I mean, we might as well translate the Grimm brothers into the world's languages and say it was inspired by Rumpelstiltskin or something!

Kind of. It'd be nice if we could convince some people, but mostly this is literary criticism. I mean, a ton of people use the bible as the basis for their life, or so they claim; it's probably really important to examine such a book with an unbiased view toward what it says, and whether the moral content in it is really worth following or not.

Some people aren't going to be convinced. Others might, and that's cool, but even if the bible were completely reliable, that wouldn't say anything about a god. Evidence would, and that's what's lacking; that's really the reason not to take it seriously.